Horns vs Ribbons vs Dyanamic

Audiotomb made a good start,

Horns - tendency to honk/shrillness but sound good with trumpet and are very easy to drive with low power amps.

Ribbons - tweeters are often unreliable, long ribbons behave like planars....lots of reverberation/ambience

Planar - lots of ambience and radiation in all directions means room placement is critical. They also beam (some designs used curved surfaces but this is a problem of any large radiating surface) and are hard to drive. These are almost never used in pro audio - so that tells you a lot.

Dynamic (box speakers) - the most popular form of speaker both in consumer and pro audio and for very good reasons. Accuracy, sound quality, reliability and price are generally unmatched by all other competing designs, which is why there are so many of them.

Electrostatic (????) - same as planar

A lot depends on your amp.
Planers and other panels suck up the wattage.
Maggies like 200 plus watts, while horns are usually happy with 2 watts...
That may change your outlook?

There are good examples of all these designs, past...and present day. Each has some advantage over the others in some small part of sound reproduction...and dis-advantages.

Some speaker systems are hybrid designs, these types try to incorporate the advantages of two or more of these designs into one package...there are also some fine examples of these designs.

I've owned, at one time or another...all of the above.

Dave

For heaven sake, I would've thought by now everyone had this straight: "PLANAR" includes BOTH electrostatic (like MartinLogan) AND planar-magnetic (like Maggies -- or MAGNA-PLANAR, the company name? hello!) The two have VASTLY different amplifier requirements and CANNOT be lumped together!!

As for the original inquiry, Mr. Ledhed is just a little confused -- and he's not alone judging from the other posts. If you don't count plasma tranducers, there are really only two categories: dynamic and electrostatic (BTW, Maggies and ribbons and Apogees are DYNAMIC -- they're just rolled out flat!) As for horns, horns are NOT a transducer, they are a form of ENCLOSURE and belong in a separate category including bass reflex, line array, infinite baffle, etc.

A SPEAKER, is a combination of a driver WITH an enclosure or particular mounting arrangement. So, you can legitimately ask about the sound of different kinds of drivers -- a rather small category, or just as legitimately ask about the sound of different kinds of speakers, a much larger category. But you can't mix the two categories together in making such an inquiry.
.

"These are almost never used in pro audio - so that tells you a lot." Like what?

B&W's get used in the pro audio a lot, even with their flaccid, bloated bass. Berenger get's used a lot in pro audio, but sends shivers up the spines of many here.